"Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is." All there is to say. A wonderful poem for the day, Tom. Thanks for saying so much with so few syllables every day for us to share. A wonderful blog. And now back to visiting relatives. . . .

in the softcold evening of ghostlynew yorkall the citizens and charactersbump and tumble into each otherdown subways and outstore doorsfeeling theirjoyous anxious way they slip into the holyanonymity of treasuresand pain that they find at homeor on the streets. in the morning the ghosts are gone again.

What Wallace Stevens needed for cheer, perhaps, was a warm breeze from Patagonia and a snow-dancing cat.

(Even as I say that, as if conjured, the largest and most obstreporous and ungainly of our gang of furs has clambered down over the pile of scarves that simulates my head, and thence onto the keyboard, causing a spill of "2"s, as 22222..)

I had convinced myself this wonderful cat in the photo was leaping to attempt to catch a snowflake; however the wise Lady of the Dilapidated Manor, who is never wrong, opines that cats are not so silly as that, and that someone has dangled a lure, most likely a savoury Kitty Treat, above the frame...

(It's German snow, by the way.)

Anyway, what better occasion than to say, Leigh, Otto, Lucy, George, Zeph, Charlie and Zev, you have all been brilliant sustaining friends of this humble blog, and we here in the feline igloo wish each of you the warmest and most pleasant of holidays (and the same to those christmas ghosts... why is it they seem so familiar?).

Beautiful poem Tom, how good to find it here on Christmas morning (!) when I looked to see what you might have writ. Ah, true, "One must have a mind of winter" (now), and now the days will be getting longer, more light (for a while at least!). . . .

I agree with Angelica, brave, beautiful and true, diese miezekatze wird geneckt! Although I may be speaking as the osmosis-drenched mutha of a 16-year-old with a mind somewhere other than winter...

This Stevens poem is full of the desire to find connection, even if it's with nothing, which is everything. This is a proposition that, as memory serves, many find strangely threatening, whether the poem's imagery evokes Stevens' barren snowscape or the high desert...so even though my arthritic bones and general orientation tend to shun the cold, I feel at home with the Snow Man. Thanks for this gift, Tom, among the many you bestow.

As the full moon appears through clouds in the first minutes of the new decade, and in the distance there are muffled sounds of explosions that must be part of someone's celebrations, and now and then a car whooshes past, and then again the night falls silent, I believe I can hear, in these light tappings of the keys, the echo of the voice of my friend you. Almost... which is of course always much better than not at all.